


Half a Mile From Jersey

by APgeeksout



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s05e12 Swap Meat, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:31:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The face in the smeary glass is his own again.  Dark circles and all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half a Mile From Jersey

**Author's Note:**

> Title snagged from Amos Lee's "I'm Not Myself"

Sam rubs the scratchy towel through his hair one last time, then wipes it down the fogged mirror.  The squeak the fabric makes against the pane echoes in the tiny bathroom and jangles his nerves more than it should.

The face in the smeary glass is his own again.  Dark circles and all.  He’s relieved.  Of course.  It’s been years since he was a clumsy, never-quite-good-enough kid.  Years since his own skin has been an uncomfortable place to be.

He tries out a smile.  Looks real enough.  Might even convince Dean these days.

His hands are his to move, even if he can’t seem to will them to quit shaking.  His meatsuit is entirely his own again.  Unfortunately, that means the aches, the bruises, and little scrapes are his now too.

At least he left the little asshole some rope burns in exchange.

He won’t remember it this time.  Whatever Gary used his face and his hands and the rest of him to do won’t surface over the next couple of weeks, waking him in a cold sweat, turning his stomach inside out, keeping him from looking Dean in the eye.  Not that he needs any new reasons for that.

The soreness in his back is familiar – he’s guessing he got tossed around again, maybe into some shelves, a rough set of stairs.  Or, the way things have been going, both.  The tenderness along his jaw means he took a hard punch, one Gary almost certainly didn’t know how to block.  The small, stinging scratches on his hands are harder to place, but then he often picks those up without noticing even when he’s in control of himself.

The rest is familiar, too.  The raw purple-red bruises tucked into the sensitive spots above his collarbone and along his hip are unmistakable.  Whether or not he'll ever know where these came from, hickeys aren’t exactly a mystery to Sam.  He remembers a 14 year-old Dean, blushing, tugging his collar closed with one hand and drilling his little brother in the shoulder to cut off his questions with the other.  Jess's mouth, eager and wet against his throat, flashcards, utility bills, grocery lists scattered and abandoned around them.  His own teeth and tongue drawing Ruby's blood to the surface, hard in spite of himself as the blade grazed over her soft, stolen skin.

He shifts away from the mirror to fumble into some clothes.  There’s nothing inside him he wants to see reflected.

He steps out of the bathroom and finds Dean sitting at the room’s scarred table, picking at a basket of onion rings.

“Your salad’s been getting soggy out here, Annabelle,” he gestures at the takeout bag in front of the other vinyl chair.  “You been getting reacquainted with your hot bod or something?”

“You really want to hear about it while you eat if I have?”  He drops his dirty clothes on top of his duffel and sinks down at the table.

Dean snorts appreciatively and takes another slurp of milkshake, giving him one of those deliberately casual once-overs he always thinks Sam doesn’t notice.  “Seriously, you’re good?”

There are a dozen answers to that, and he’s not even sure anymore which ones are true, which ones Dean expects or needs to hear, so he just focuses on steadying the hands that rip open the packet of Caesar dressing and says, “Yeah, nothing we haven’t seen before, I guess.”

He tries out the smile.  Dean only nods, looks away, and reaches for another onion ring.

“So, I noticed you were moving pretty stiff this morning.”  He’d had to stop and catch his breath just to get out from behind the wheel when they’d first arrived, given a hushed almost-whimper climbing out of bed a few hours later to shuffle into the bathroom, emerging fully dressed, lurid bruises and maybe worse tucked away beneath worn cotton.  Still, it had to become “a little stiff” if Dean was going to own up to it.  “Something I did?”

“Not you,” Dean says, something defiant and insistent and achingly familiar sparking in his eyes as he sits straighter in his chair, “and not Gary either.  The ribs were all the demon inside the Junior Class Treasurer.”

“Gary do anything else I ought to know about?”

“Well, I’m surprised you don’t have a killer girl-drink hangover.  There was a chick at the bar.  I don’t know how far that went before he struck out.”

It takes a hard swallow, chicken and romaine and cheese turning to a sour paste in his throat, before he can answer.  “Too far, I’m sure.  You know the Key Club there was planning to kill you, right?  Did he do anything about that?”

Dean pushes back from the table and crosses his arms protectively over his ribs, “Little fucker thought he was going to shoot me in my sleep.  Next time something’s gonna wear your face around, could you arrange for it not to pull a gun on me?  I’m getting a little bored with that scene.”

“I’ll see if I can work something out,” he says, trying to match Dean’s wry tone, and falling miles short.  “So, how did you know it wasn’t me this time?”

Dean rises from his seat and crosses the room to settle on the edge of his bed, his every movement ginger.  “He actually got someone to take him home from the bar,” he says, his joking tone wearing thin, turning bitter.  He leans over to worry at his bootlaces, almost managing to swallow his groan, and doesn’t look at Sam, even when he turns in his chair to face him.

“C’mon, Dean.  This kind of thing has happened before, to both of us, and with our luck, it’ll probably happen again.  We need to know what to look for next time.”

“Sam, you don’t want to hear this,” Dean says, toeing off his boots and curling up on the threadbare bedspread.  The lines around his eyes are etched deep, and his shoulders and back are curved like he's making himself smaller, easier to hold together.  He looks so worn out that Sam almost lets it drop, lets his brother rest and shove the last couple of days down into whatever dark hole he's reserved for the worst things in his life.

But Dean’s already had to bury too much hurt because of him, so instead he turns away from his food and says, “Dean, whatever he said to you, I’m sorry.  You know it wasn’t me.  That I didn’t mean it.”

Dean lets out the most humorless chuckle Sam’s heard in his life.  “Believe me, kiddo, I know.”  He props himself up on his elbow.  The motion must jar his ribs, because he draws a shaky breath before he continues, “I started thinking something was off because you were happy, Sam.  You were excited about the hunt, the life.  You were too fucking thrilled to be hanging out with me-”

“Dean.” He doesn’t know how to finish, just that he has to say something.

“What, Sam?  You’re the one who wanted to know.  I’m just telling you how I’m a pitiful Sally fucking Field over here.  I was sure you weren’t you anymore when it turned out that you liked me, you really liked me.”  He lets himself fall back onto the bed, and if Dean looked beat before, Sam doesn’t have a word for the way he looks now, sunk into the pillows, eyes determinedly fixed on the stained ceiling, throat working in a way that makes Sam’s own ache.

He stands, stops indecisively in the space between the beds, “Dean, I don’t know how we got here.  Or maybe I do and I just don’t know how to get back.”  He sits hesitantly at the foot of Dean’s bed.  His brother doesn’t shift away, even if he still won’t look at him.  “You’re my best friend, man.  Always were.  I’m sorry it doesn’t always feel that way.”

“So, what? You’re okay being stuck with me?” Dean mutters.

“More than okay.  And not stuck.”

Dean scoffs, a harsh, wet, skeptical sound, but Sam pushes on.

“I mean it, Dean.  We’re free to split up, and sometimes we do, but it never seems to take.  And that’s not plain bad luck or a curse or destiny or any of that other bullshit.  It’s just us.  I choose you, and you choose me.  And I’m glad.  Except maybe when you put Seger on for the eighty-five-thousandth time.”

“Like ‘Against the Wind’ isn’t the ideal soundtrack to the share and care session you’ve been starving for,” Dean murmurs, turning toward him, one corner of his mouth ticking up, the beginning of a crooked smile.

“You know it’s what I live for,” he returns, giving Dean’s ankle a light squeeze, “and you’re always so gracious about it.”

“Gracious is my middle fuckin’ name.”

Sam snickers, “Dean Gracious Debonair Scrappy Winchester?”

“Don’t wear it out.  Now go eat your lunch and let me crash for a while.”

“Are we okay?  For now?”

Dean groans and makes an elaborate show of rolling his eyes. “You weren't this annoying and touchy-feely when you weren't you either.”  He digs a stockinged foot gently into Sam's ribs, nudging him toward the table.  “Seriously, you've been eating crap all weekend.  Finish your food and we'll handle everything else later.”

He goes back to his plate, angles his chair so that while he eats, he can also watch Dean settle into an uneasy sleep, shifting on top of the covers in his jeans and flannel.  "Later" might mean during a commercial break in tonight's late night creature feature or in the Impala after tomorrow morning’s coffee run or the next time one of them is looped from blood loss or painkillers or both or just after the fourth horseman is nothing but a smear of gore on his pale horse.  It’s hard to tell with Dean sometimes, but he seems to think they'll still be a "we" whenever it comes.  For the first time since his brother pressed the ivory handle of Ruby’s knife back into his palm, it almost feels like enough.


End file.
